


a heart, a spell

by cloudcompany



Category: CrankGameplays - Fandom, Unus Annus - Fandom, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Attempts at World Domination, Dark Magic, Dark!Mark, M/M, Magic, Spells & Enchantments, Witch!Ethan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24631480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudcompany/pseuds/cloudcompany
Summary: in order to complete his spell, mark needs the heart of a pure individual. his search leads him to a little cottage in the woods, where a certain witch lives.
Relationships: Mark Fischbach/Ethan Nestor
Comments: 38
Kudos: 142





	1. early spring

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is my first mark/ethan fic. my other fics can be read as either platonic or lampshaded romantic, but know that they were written to be platonic (because i'm a sucker for platonic hand-holding, hugging, etc.). this is the only one that's outright romantic. i just felt like the story had to be written this way, because I like their dynamic, so here we are. please enjoy!

a heart, a spell

Mark has read the grimoire front and back more times than he can count over the past few weeks. There are scraps of paper strewn about the study, each one scrawled in increasingly messy handwriting, as if the hand that wrote it was growing more and more frantic with each note. There are lists of ingredients scrawled on some, possible locations to said ingredients on others. Some have equations and fractions to help measure out how much of each ingredient should be used (the spell needs to be extremely potent, but not so much that he can’t control it). Some papers have singed corners. Others are neat and tidy. Some are stained and smeared.

Mark’s been at it a long time anyway, starting from when he’d first gotten his hands on the grimoire. It had belonged to an old wizard tasked with guarding the forbidden tomes of magic from those who would see them used as weapons of destruction.

People like Mark.

The old mage had put up quite a fight, Mark nearly losing an arm in the process, but he’d come out of the battle with the grimoire he’d so coveted and the blood of the guardian on his hands. Opening the damn thing had been almost as tricky as fighting the wizard. Mark’s own magic reacted well with the book – as a book of dark magic in the possession of a dark mage should - but not well enough to open it without having to pour almost all of his strength into it. The first pulse of his dark magic had barely wiggled the heavy lock on the cover. The book – while not sentient – was attuned to the magic of shadows and silence, and while Mark had that in spades, the powerful white magic that had been cast to keep the book from being opened by the likes of him was almost too much.

Almost.

The second try had swallowed the already dimly lit study in a darkness so inky and black that even the meager lamplight from the lamp on his desk in the middle of the room couldn’t even pierce it.

Finally, on the third try, Mark broke through the barrier of white magic – had nearly caused a cave-in in the process - but had promptly collapsed afterwards and succumbed to an exhaustion so intense that he hadn’t woken for a week. His faithful golden wolf Chica had watched over the cave in his absence until he woke (she’d dragged Mark with her teeth to the pile of furs and goose down that he used as a bed and left him there, so at least he hadn’t had to spend a week sore and cold and stiff on the stone floor of his study).

With the grimoire finally open, then came the ‘fun’ part: sifting through the number of spells until he found the one he wanted. For a book of forbidden magic, the pages were surprisingly crammed with spells. Some were written in the margins while others had been scrawled on slips of parchment wedged between the pages. Mark knew that there was quite a number of dark spells in the world, but he hadn’t expected there to be so _many_. There had to be hundreds in this book alone!

He’d heard of some of them, whispered in tales of old, back when dark magic had run rampant throughout the land: _nubes ignis_ , skies of fire, had erased an entire city from the map. _Timor linuga_ , fear tongue, had sent one of the great kings into a raving madness that had consumed his entire kingdom, leaving the world with six kings instead of seven. Some of these spells were so old that they didn’t even have names, and some were so ancient that there was only a vague idea of what they actually did, but it was the general consensus that they should be left alone under any and all circumstances. Mark paid those no mind; he had no use for spells he couldn’t control and had no way of knowing the outcome of their casting.

 _Occasione tenebris_ , a cloak of darkness. That was the spell Mark wanted. This was an old, old magic. The few casters who had been able to get away with the use of dark magic had spoken of it only in hushed whispers. It was one of the few that was especially dangerous. One of the few that had never actually been successfully cast.

Technically, the spell _had_ worked. Its effects had reached as far as the southern kingdoms almost overnight. But the caster – whose name had been lost to time – had been unable to control it. It was too potent, too much of an ingredient, not enough experience with dark magic; there were many theories and reasons as to why the spell hadn’t worked. Whatever had happened gave the magic a mind of its own. It had swallowed the caster up too and he’d vanished without a trace. Therefore, the spell had been deemed a failure; no one had any use for a spell they couldn’t live to see to fruition.

Mark would make no such mistake. After the fifth day of poring over the grimoire, he found what he was looking for: a three page list of ingredients, an incantation and a note left behind from a mystery caster.

‘ _gods be with you’_

He’d taken the time to read the spell over and over, scouring every page of the lengthy recipe, taking notes, double-checking even the tiniest detail. Some of the ingredients were relatively easy to find: an oddly ominous sounding flower called the Lady Moira’s Revenge, the blood of thieves, the eyes of a dead man.

Others would take a little work and finesse, like the essence of a starless night sky or the terrified screams of a child. And then there was the final ingredient: a pure heart.

Mark had almost gagged at the sentimentality of it. A pure heart; what a load of fairy tale bullshit. And what constituted a pure heart? A maiden who sang to birds and attracted forest animals just by smiling at them? A saint who prayed to their god so reverently and diligently that it left time for no one and nothing else in their lives? A baby, who had not yet been tarnished by the cruelty of the world they’d been born into?

It was so vague and left up to interpretation that it almost seemed like a cruel joke. This was the one ingredient that Mark was most worried about. If he messed this one up, who knew how badly that would ruin the spell? Was this what had ruined the spell the first time? What was a pure heart supposed to contribute to a dark magic spell anyway? That sounded a lot like white magic, the kind that asked for bits of hair in order to change someone’s appearance.

To be fair, some dark spells demanded a heart, but it was mostly required in spells having to do with the body, like necromancy. The heart was the final ingredient Mark needed for the spell. He’d gathered the others swiftly: raided a thief hideout for the blood of thieves, recovered the eyes of the wizard he’d defeated, captured the essence of a starless sky in a bottle. He’d spent days deep in thought over where he was going to get the heart from and during that time, he hadn’t eaten at all. He was partial to hunting in the woods near the caves and had leftover meat stashed away from the winter months that had just passed, but after all of this, he _desperately_ needed a drink.

Of course, there was no liquor in the caves. In some circumstances, alcohol left anywhere near certain spells could be catastrophic. Mark – ever cautious and meticulous – simply opted to leave the liquor at the pub where it belonged rather than risk a spell being ruined.

Chica raises her large head as he walks past, cloak pulled around his shoulders and sweeping out behind him as he walks.

“Study’s off-limits,” he tells her.

She blinks her dark gold eyes at him and lowers her head onto her paws. Chica is relatively careful in the study most days, but there had been an unfortunate instance where her tail had been wagging and had knocked every bottle off the shelf in the process. The entire cave system had reeked of sulfur and swamp water for weeks. Mark hates to think what would happen if she ventured into the study now, what with all of his painstakingly gathered ingredients stashed there.

Outside the caves, Mark stops at the mouth and turns back, flicking his wrist, and with a simple hand gesture, the entire cave seems to swallow itself whole. The mouth disappears, as if sucked into itself, leaving only a solid sheet of rock on the side of the cliff. With the entrance to his caves hidden away, Mark turns and disappears into the trees, nothing but a shadow between the leaves.

* * *

Mark doesn’t have a favorite watering hole. They’re all the same to him; loud, noisy places that stink of booze and unwashed bodies. The people who frequent them are even more so. Mark’s been present for more than a few bar fights, some of which he found himself as one of the participants, all of which he won. He hadn’t even needed to use his magic to lay his would-be attackers flat, had simply used his hands – quick as lightning – and the raw intimidation of his appearance. He wasn’t the tallest, nor the strongest, and if you glanced at him only once, you’d call him attractive and be on your way, sensing nothing wrong: skin the color of sandstorms and amber, inky black hair, strong facial features. But where the intimidation sprung forward was in his eyes, which were so dark and brown that they almost resembled rubies, deep red in the light and sharper than any blade.

All of the pubs in town know him. He’s been to every one of them, left his mark in each. There’s one in particular he frequents more often than the others, not out of any real preference for the drinks or service, but because it’s the one that’s the least obnoxious: Mark’s general relationship with the bars in town was that they were all like being bitten by a dog. Some of the dogs were bigger and meaner than the others, some smaller and quieter, but they were all going to bite you no matter what. It was simply a matter of picking the least worst one.

The Emerald Isle is owned by a loud and vivacious man who everyone calls Jack. He annoys Mark. He’s noisy and friendly with everyone, except when a fight breaks out. He’s been known to jump in and smash a cusk of ale over people’s heads in those instances. His eyes are blue enough that Mark suspects he’s got some magic running through his veins, but he can’t quite tell if it’s strong enough for him to be concerned about. That’s the thing that annoys him most; Jack’s got some kind of power and he won’t tell Mark about any of it.

Mark had tried asking once.

“What’s your deal?”

Jack blinked. “My deal?”

“Aside from me, you’re the next magically inclined person in this bar. What’s your deal? Black or white?” Mark had asked. He sincerely doubted black, but he’d been surprised before.

Jack looked shocked for a moment, then his surprise morphed into mischievousness.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he’d said with a wink. Then he’d turned away and gone back to tending the bar.

Now, as Mark arrived, he was behind the bar once more, chatting loudly and quickly with that strange accent of his. Jack had told him once that it was the accent belonging to the Emerald Isles, the land for which the bar was named. At first, it had been almost unintelligible to Mark’s untrained ears, but as time went on, it had almost become as clear as day itself.

“Knew I felt someone darkening the doorstep,” says Jack when he settles down at the bar. He throws his cleaning rag over his shoulder and leans with one hand against the bar, the other on his hip. “Been awhile, Dark.”

That’s Jack’s nickname for him. _Dark_. Rhymes with Mark, encompasses everything about him, from his facial expressions to his aura. It’s perfect, or at least Jack thinks so.

“Not long enough,” growls Mark. “White whiskey.”

Jack sketches out an exaggerated bow. “As you wish.”

Whoever Mark is sitting next to is too drunk to realize who he is, but the one on his right scrambles to his feet after doing a double-take and nearly spills his drink trying to scurry away. That’s about par for the course. Mark likes it that way; no one will bother him. No one except for Jack of course. Mark doesn’t even bother to take a look around the bar for any shady figures. He can handle them wherever they may be.

Jack returns with a cusk and tips a generous amount of whiskey into it. “You look like shit,” he says as he pours.

Mark glares at him.

Jack shrugs, unbothered. He’s never been as easily cowed by Mark as the others. It’s extremely grating.

“Rough night?” says Jack conversationally.

“Know any saints around here?” Mark answers instead.

Jack’s eyes flicker up at him, before returning to the whiskey. “No, can’t say I do. Why? Thinking of converting?”

A cheeky _hell no_ , is on the tip of Mark’s tongue, but he resists. That’s too conversational and Jack might mistake it for a pun. He’s always been a man who liked to get straight to the point anyway, hated wasting any words, even a few.

“Any babies been born lately?”

Jack makes a face. “That’s suspicious sounding. You trying to become someone’s shadowy fairy godmother?”

“Any virgin maidens come through here?”

Jack sets the whiskey aside. “Okay, I don’t know what kind of dark and evil scheme you’re trying to cook up here but leave me out of it. I mean, if you’re looking for a bit of fun tonight with some girl, _fine_ , there’s a brothel east of here, but other than that, I don’t want anything to do with it.”

Mark glares harder and sips from his whiskey as Jack turns away. It burns warm and true on the way down. A few more of these and he’ll feel more like a man who can take on the world, rather than a moody teenager hellbent on taking a nap. Jack serves the other customers, the rest of the bar going on with life normally around Mark. Shame that it was going to come to an abrupt halt soon. If this spell worked – _and it would_ – there would be nothing left of this peaceful way of living. Maybe Jack would survive. Maybe he would take revenge on Mark for destroying his livelihood. Maybe then he’d see what kind of power he had. Mark hums thoughtfully into his cusk. That was something to look forward to.

Someone sidles up to the bar, and Mark knows they’re there only because Jack announces their arrival.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite customer,” chirps Jack, leaning on the bar as the newcomer takes a seat a few seats down from Mark. “How’s it been, Ethan?”

Mark can’t hear the response over the noise of the bar around him and he doesn’t care to look up from his drink to see who it is that Jack’s speaking to.

“Let me guess: two bottles of the amber ale, right?” says Jack already waving over one of the bar maids. “Two of the ambers, love,” Jack tells her. As she disappears into the cellar to retrieve the ale, Jack turns back to the patron. “What kind of spells are you casting that you need the nastiest batch of alcohol this side of Porthaven so often?”

That catches Mark’s attention and he glances up. Out of the corner of his eye he can see a man – no, a boy, maybe – with light hazel eyes. Mark turns his head a little, trying to catch a better glimpse of those eyes. He expects them to be eerily iridescent, the mark of magic running through someone’s veins. Instead, they’re the kind of bright of a different sort: the kid reeks of innocence. Any beginnings of a buzz that Mark might have had disappears almost instantaneously. This was it; the last ingredient was sitting right in front of him, its owner smiling happily at Jack as he received his bottles of ale.

“Thanks; I’ll bring you some purpleberry pie tomorrow,” says the kid.

“Hell yeah,” says Jack excitedly. “Evelien’s never had it before; she’s gonna love it.”

The kid says his goodbyes and hops off the barstool, and as he turns to go, his eyes meet Mark’s. It’s only for a moment, but he smiles at Mark politely and then disappears into the crowd of bargoers. If he recognized Mark, his eyes hadn’t shown it, and if he was suspicious, Mark hadn’t seen the expression cross his face. He had absolutely no idea what was coming for him in the night.

Mark slaps a few coins on the bar and slips out of his seat with the grace of a cat, making to follow the kid into the crowd before someone grabs him.

“Mark.”

Mark grabbed the wrist attached to the hand that had somehow found its way onto his shoulder, and twisted, a touch of his magic flaring up in warning. Jack was behind him at the bar, but instead of backing off, face twisted in a grimace from the pain of Mark’s hold, he held Mark’s gaze and his ground. His eyes flashed, glowing bright blue like Mark had never seen them. Any trace of the jovial bartender he’d known had disappeared, replaced by a seriousness that looked out of place and ominous on Jack’s face.

“I don’t know what your deal is,” he says, eyes still glowing brightly, voice low and dangerous, “but you leave that kid alone, hear me? He’s got no need for the likes of you.”

Mark scowled, annoyed at Jack for having stopped him and even more so because he _still_ couldn’t tell what kind of magic Jack possessed, even as his eyes glowed eerily at him. He couldn’t even get a read on his supposed strength. Where most magic would have felt like a slight hum or a vibration, it was like there was nothing there.

Whatever. A mystery for another time.

Without a word, Mark shoves Jack’s wrist away, making the bartender stumble slightly, then turns and brusquely exits the bar.

* * *

For someone as slight and innocent as Ethan, he sure did not seem to mind walking alone in the middle of the night. The town wasn’t particularly dangerous, not crawling with thieves and cutthroats like some other places, but it wasn’t exactly the type of place you just meandered around at night. He didn’t realize that he was being tailed either, but that was no fault of his. Mark was too skilled, too enshrouded in darkness to be detected. And Ethan didn’t have a lick of magic to his name, so of course he wasn’t able to feel Mark following him; no glowing eyes, not even a hint of the telltale vibration. At least Jack had the eyes. Ethan was a bona-fide human being. So what had Jack been talking about when he’d mentioned spells?

Mark’s first thought is that Ethan is one of those pretend mages. Some idiot kid playing pretend with weeds and crystals in the woods. There were people like that, those who fancied themselves witches, playing at making hexes and claiming to be attuned to the raw magic of the earth. Mark doubted Ethan was any different. Witches didn’t have magic of their own, they borrowed it from the earth, learning spells supplied by the inherent magic in herbs and crystals and even the dirt under their feet. They weren’t nearly as powerful as born and bred mages, whose refined magic toppled kingdoms and coursed in their blood.

In fact, Mark’s spell, the cloak of darkness, was a mixture of the earth’s magic and his own, which was why it was forbidden. Witch magic and mage magic were never supposed to mix; it was simply too much power, unnatural and chaotic.

Mark walks along the shadows, footfalls silent even as he walks at a normal pace. It’s with the help of his magic, sure, but he’s also just as skilled physically without it. Ethan doesn’t suspect a thing. He walks and walks, to the outskirts of town, where he disappears into the trees and beyond. Mark follows closely behind, curiosity piqued. The woods, huh? He supposed that made sense; this was a supply run – maybe weekly or monthly – so it was probably safe to assume that Ethan wasn’t up-to-date on the goings on of the bars and their patrons. He probably hadn’t been in town long enough to even hear about Mark, let alone see him when he made an appearance. No wonder he didn’t recognize him.

Ethan walks, bottles cradled in his arms against his chest, completely unbothered. He even hums a tune, one that Mark recognizes as an old ballad about two lovers. Sometimes he sings a few bars under his breath, but for the most part, the walk is quiet. The light of the moon dapples the floor of the woods through the tree leaves, an early spring breeze blowing gently through the limbs from time to time. It really is a lovely night. It’s a shame it will end in bloodshed.

Ethan sings the part of the song about how strong the man’s love is for his beloved. He has a nice voice, Mark thinks. Maybe he’ll cut out his vocal cords too; they might be useful for a different spell. He’s not being needlessly grisly, he’s just thinking ahead.

The scent of a campfire wafts through the air. They must be getting close to Ethan’s home. Sure enough, after a little more walking, a little cottage comes into view. It’s…quaint, a charming little thing with a chopped wood fence surrounding what looks like a garden on one side of the cottage, even a little clothesline and a block for chopping wood. Looks warm, inviting. It’s nothing like Mark’s cold, dark caves. Ethan stops humming as he opens the little gate and steps inside, letting it swing shut behind him.

“I know you’re there.” Ethan’s voice rings clear out into the air. Mark freezes. There was no way…

Suddenly, there’s the sound of feet romping through the underbrush, coming from in front of them, and a salt and pepper dog comes bounding from somewhere behind the cottage, barking happily.

Ethan kneels down to meet it, scratching behind its ears and under its chin.

“Hey, Spencer. Did you miss me? I wasn’t gone long,” says Ethan. The dog barks once, then moves out of Ethan’s grasp, looking past him. Mark narrows his eyes. Animals had always been attuned to the nature of magic; it made perfect sense that Ethan’s dog had noticed him. The dog barked again, ears flat against its skull.

“What’s wrong?” says Ethan, turning to look too. “What’s out there?”

Mark half expects the words to die on his lips as he spots him standing three steps away, but Ethan’s eyes flit from tree to tree, searching, Mark’s presence still unknown to him. He sees Ethan shiver, then turn and shoo the dog back towards the cottage. He takes one last look into the dark of the woods, brow furrowed in either concern or worry, before heading to the front door and letting himself and the dog inside. Mark snorts softly. He hadn’t seen any sort of unlocking going on before Ethan had gone inside. If he looked closely, he could see that there wasn’t even a lock on the door above or below the knob. Was he really that sure that no one would come out this way? Or was it that he was especially confident in his so-called spellweaving? Still, Mark looks at the trees, at the wood of the fence surrounding the cottage. He can’t see any symbols carved into them, doesn’t see any talismans or charms hanging from them that might give away that there was a protective spell or trap lying in wait.

He waits. Thin tendrils of bluish-white smoke still waft from the chimney and Mark can see the soft glow of firelight from the window. He can smell the scent of stew from all the way out here. Ethan goes about his nightly chores, moving back and forth in the cottage, his shadow cast against the window each time he passes by. Eventually, almost two hours later, the shadow stops and doesn’t move again. Mark waits another half-hour to see if Ethan will get up again, then when nothing happens, he moves in.

He’s still cautious; there’s something off about the whole situation after all. There was no way Ethan was that careless as to leave his door unlocked, even this far out into the woods. As he approaches the gate, he lifts his hand to swing it open, and immediately realizes that he’s made a mistake a second too late to correct it. The spell activates.

The pain hits him in a tall and powerful wave, intense enough that when Mark opens his mouth to cry out, there’s no noise. It’s a seizing sort of a pain, the kind that locks up your limbs and is free to coarse through the muscles and veins like molten iron, the kind that frightens with how sudden and searing it is. It torches nerve-endings, slices through bone, tears through his lungs. Mark has never felt anything like it, but thankfully, it only lasts a few seconds, and then the world goes entirely, completely, _blessedly_ black around him.


	2. morning in the witch's lair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark wakes up. He needs to be careful; he's in the witch's lair now.

When Mark finally wakes, everything stings.

It’s gradual, the pain eventually building up into a dull throb, manageable, but nonetheless annoying. His muscles ache, his bones feel brittle like they might collapse under the strain of supporting his body, and his head is pounding. Mark's been drunk before a few times, back when he was younger, stupider; compared to how he feels now, a hangover from the past would be welcome right about now. He's still incredibly exhausted, a miles deep fatigue that makes him want to sleep for ages before he feels rested again. Gods, but this was annoying. And _this_ is how he felt after his magic had done the most it could do to protect him from the worst of the spell? He hadn't even faced the worst of the spell on the gate and he already felt like death warmed over! What the hell kind of spell even was that? Mark lies still and breathes for a while longer, acclimating himself to the current state of his body. He couldn't afford to just roll over and go back to sleep (not that he felt spry enough to roll in the first place), but the least he can do is give himself a breather, a little encouragement to get up and be conscious among the living. _It's bright_ , he thinks, which means its daylight. He can see the pinpricks of light even behind the dark of his eyelids. He’s been unconscious all night then. _Great_ , he grumbles in his thoughts. How amateurish. He'd taken worse magical blows before and gotten up again, hadn't he? He tries to convince himself that he has, but even deep down in the pit of his being, he knows that whatever spell was on that gate was unlike anything he'd ever faced before. He blinks his eyes, once, twice. His head aches worse at the sudden vibrance. His limbs are still too sore.

He groans as he tries to sit up, propping himself upright on one elbow, and recognizes the sound of hard little nails clicking against the wood floor. Suddenly a dog is jumping up onto the cot and sniffing at his face and it takes Mark a moment to realize that it’s the dog from the night before, same salt and pepper fur, eyes blue as a summer sky. He shoos the dog away, but it only settles for standing by the cot, tail wagging, looking up at Mark curiously. A heavy wool quilt has been draped over Mark’s body, sliding down into his lap as he sits up straighter. This is decidedly not the outdoors. He's in a bed, in a cottage, a place which was clearly not his. Gods, but he was slipping. It had taken him this long to figure out that he was somewhere he shouldn't be? Handicapped or not, he should have been more alert, more aware. That was a good way to wind up dead, not paying attention to where you were at all times. Even if he had been unconscious, it still shouldn't have taken him this long to get his bearings. He scowls at the dog again, as if the creature's happy dog-grin had been smugly agreeing with Mark's own thoughts. _You're definitely slipping,_ he imagines the dog saying. He scowls. Did he really just imagine the dog talking? He really was losing it. _Been in the caves too long_. He removes himself from his thoughts and grimaces at the light filtering in from the windows, narrows his eyes at himself. He’s not wearing a shirt.

Lifting up the quilt, he’s relieved to find he’s still wearing his pants, but his boots, cloak and shirt are gone, along with his belt and pouch. Mark looks around the cottage for them. The boots he finds near the door - like they've belonged there for the longest time- and the belt and pouch are hanging on a hook on the wall. His shirt, however, remains mysteriously absent.

That’s… disconcerting.

If Ethan actually is a witch - and he's not gotten so careless as to not be able to deduce who's cottage he's found himself in, thank you very much - having something of Mark’s was dangerous. He could use the shirt in a spell - tracking, hexing or otherwise - and if the strength of that spell on the gate was anything to go by, he couldn’t afford to underestimate Ethan again. He needs to find his things and get on with the job he came here to complete; hanging around any longer was a sure way to encounter even more problems, like Mark hadn't had enough trouble already.

Before he can move, the front door opens and someone comes stumbling in. Ethan is carrying a large wicker basket, almost as big as he is, filled with carrots and potatoes and a few other assorted vegetables. He’s just shutting the door behind him with his foot when he looks up and notices Mark.

“Oh,” says Ethan, placing the basket on floor by the fireplace. “You’re awake! How do you feel?”

Mark looks at him, astonishment washing over him bit by bit. Now that he's in front of him, well and truly in front of him, he's....he's not exactly sure what to make of him. Any previous ideas he'd had about the witch are suddenly gone, vanished into thin air.

“Can you talk? Oh, shoot, I don’t know any sign language,” says Ethan, running a hand through his dark hair. “Look, I just found you outside my house a few nights ago-“

“A few _nights_?” echoes Mark.

“Oh! You _can_ talk. Um, yeah, it’s been a few nights. I was worried you wouldn’t wake up after the first day. I found you outside the next morning in front of the gate and brought you inside.”

Mark narrows his eyes. That certainly jogs his memory. “What the hell kind of spell did you put on that gate?”

Ethan immediately stops talking and pales. Mark almost panics himself; Ethan looked like he’d seen a ghost (or rather, figured out that Mark was a dark mage, but what could have given that away?).

“Oh. _Oh no_. Oh my god, I’m _so_ sorry; I didn’t think it would be that strong. I’m so sorry! I had just picked it up, you know? I mean, I’ve made protective spells and charms before, but they were always for like, personal use, right? Like keeping bandits and pickpockets away or warding off bad luck, but they were never supposed to…”

Ethan trails off, looking terribly worried and like he might be on the verge of panicking.

“ _You_ made that?”

Ethan startles at the sound of Mark’s voice. “Oh…Yeah,” he says, laughing nervously. “I only just got out of my apprenticeship a year ago, but I’ve been making spells for ages,” he adds quickly. “I just felt like,” he gestures with his hands for a moment, “like this really awful sense of foreboding. Like something terrible was coming. So I, um, tried to protect the cottage by laying a shielding spell. I guess I used too much of an ingredient. Damn. It was probably the rabbitweed; I’ve never really used that one before.”

Mark narrows his eyes at him. He’s got little to no experience with protection spells. His own caves are protected by an enchantment of their own, by no other power than their own and nothing that Mark had conjured. And his own dark magic was strong enough that protection spells were hardly needed. So he’s honestly not sure how much of the spell Ethan had cast is his own fault or the fault of the ingredients he had used. Was there a powerful herb that repelled dark magic? A crystal? He had no idea. It was a given, however, that Mark needed to be on his guard. Underestimating Ethan had proven to be dangerous.

“Where’s my shirt?”

Ethan flinches – jumpy little thing, wasn’t he? – like he wasn’t expecting Mark to ask that question and then smiles, small but bright. “Oh! I washed it. No offense, but it smelled like you had spent a week underground.”

 _A cave, actually_ , Mark thought.

“It’s hanging out to dry right now,” continues Ethan, then snaps his fingers. “I almost forgot! Are you hungry? Must be; you’ve been out for quite a while. I’ve got some potato and carrot stew leftover from last night and there’s some bread…” Ethan flits around the cottage, pulling things from cabinets, poking into jars. Mark watches him as he moves around. Ethan’s built like a twig; not much for muscle, but not too terribly skinny like he might even snap under the weight of Mark’s gaze. He must have some physical prowess if the chopping block outside anything was to go by; chopping wood regularly was bound to build _some_ muscle, even a little. But he wasn’t built like Mark. Chances were, if Mark snuck up on him and overpowered him, no magic required, he could feasibly snap this kid’s neck and help himself to his heart. Yes; that would work.

He tensed where he was perched on the cot, preparing to strike while Ethan’s back was turned to him, ladling stew out of the cauldron on the fireplace. His footfalls were silent enough. He would never even sense him closing the distance-

A thought crossed his mind then.

What was to say Ethan wasn’t wearing a protective charm on himself? He had mentioned that he’d felt something awful coming (a small part of Mark secretly wondered if _‘something awful_ ’ was really an allusion to himself); why wouldn’t he wear something to protect himself when he wasn’t confined within the safety of his own home? Mark scowls at himself. Hadn’t he just said that he was going to stop underestimating Ethan, yet here he was ready to pounce on him as if he hadn’t already demonstrated how dangerous he could be – apparently without even knowing it, no less. It wasn’t entirely Mark’s fault; it was easy to forget that he couldn’t take Ethan at face value, especially when most people Mark came across were dead by his hand mere moments after meeting him. Still, that line of thinking was going to get him killed now.

Well, maybe not _killed_ , but _seriously injured_ (after all, Mark was a tough son of bitch to actually kill; many had tried and failed over the years. He had the scars to prove it).

The point stood that he needed to be more cautious.

Mark sends a small tendril of power, miniscule and weak, towards Ethan. Instead of solidifying and running him through like a black blade the moment it comes a hair's breadth away from his shoulders, it recoils like a hissing black cat and dissipates completely. _Well_. Mark scowls even harder. If he had to guess, he’d say that the same protective charm that had been placed on the cottage was located somewhere on Ethan’s person too. Damn. If he even so much as brushed Ethan’s shoulder, he was going to be knocked flat on his ass again, completely out cold like last time. _Damn_.

Ethan turns then, a wooden bowl filled to the brim with warm stew and a generous wedge of bread in his hand.

“Here you go,” he says, carefully handing Mark the bowl. Mark notes that even as he does so, he’s careful not to touch Mark at all. He’s aware of the protective spell too, then. Mark is running out of curses. “Try to eat slowly, or else it’ll all come back up again.”

“Not my first time eating on an empty stomach,” grumbles Mark.

Ethan either doesn’t care or doesn’t hear. He takes a seat on the edge of the cot a safe distance away from Mark and leans back on his hands.

“You’re from town, aren’t you?” says Ethan conversationally. Mark takes a bite of stew, maintaining - admittedly menacing - eye contact with Ethan the entire time.

“How do you figure?” he finally relents. He'd preferred to keep things simple and to the point. Not that he was afraid of getting attached (how could he with these inane small talk inquiries?), but there was no reason to talk to Ethan if it didn’t pertain to information on the protective charm he was wearing. Mark didn’t like to draw things out.

“The people from town…they’re the only ones who come out this far,” says Ethan with a shrug. “Most times it’s hunters or something venturing deeper into the woods for animals. Sometimes its kids looking for roots and berries.”

“Any fake witches?”

Ethan smiles. “Oh, sure. There’s not many in town, but every so often we’ll get someone wandering around out here looking for faeries and runes.”

Mark stills slightly, suddenly wary. “We?” _Shit_. A second person will make things more complicated.

But Ethan nods at the salt and pepper dog gnawing on a piece of wood in the corner. “Me and Spencer. Really it’s just us out here, and sometimes it’s lonely, but we manage.”

Ah, the dog. Depending on whether or not the thing was aggressive or magically inclined like Mark's own wolf was, things could take a turn for the worst very quickly.

Ethan turns to Mark. “So what category do you fall under?”

Mark takes another bite of stew, eye contact still cold and staunchly maintained. “Take a guess,” he says, completely deadpan.

Ethan twists his mouth in thought. “Hm…not a hunter; you don’t have the gear. Definitely not a curious kid.” He tilts his head thoughtfully. “Maybe a witch?”

Mark pauses for a split second, hopes his momentary hesitation wasn’t noticeable, frowns when Ethan says in confirmation, “I figured. The spell on the gate only reacts to magical creatures.”

Mark tenses minutely. So Ethan was onto him then. His mind races with thoughts. Damn the protective spell, maybe he could smother Ethan to death with the quilt? Did the spell react to skin-to-skin contact? No, it had dispersed his magic earlier without Mark even having to touch him.

“How long have you been studying?”

Mark freezes, train of thought completely derailed. “What?”

Ethan gestures at him politely. “You’re a witch, right? Like me. How long have you been studying?”

Oh _. Oh_. Ethan doesn’t seem to realize that Mark’s got magic running through his veins. Honestly, he's not sure if that's better or worse. But Ethan knows Jack, doesn’t he? Surely he knows how to tell a mage from a witch. Hell, he’s had to have seen Jack’s eyes and-

Mark almost smiles. His _eyes_. They’ve never quite been as bright as mages like Jack’s; to most people, his eyes are a dark, deep brown. In the right light, their true color was revealed (there might have been something to be said about that, concerning his nature and purpose, but Mark was going to leave that alone for now): a cold and dark red like dragon’s blood.

Ethan doesn’t know what he is.

He can make this work.

Contrary to popular belief (though Mark isn’t sure who’s left alive to dispute this fact, save for Jack maybe), Mark can be charming. He can sway people to his side with ease with his voice and his smile. He can switch from a killer to – an albeit dark and mysterious – gentleman on a dime. He can lure people into a false sense of security, be friendly with them, and they’re none the wiser. It’s been a while since he had to do so, having spent the majority of his time simply outright killing his targets, but he can manage it. He just doesn’t do it very often because it takes too much work. But he's learned more than magic over the years: he's learned patience. And, true, it might take a little while longer for him to achieve the desired results this way, but he’s nothing, now, if not patient. He’s waited this long. He can wait a little longer. He’s got nothing but time, and wheedling his way into Ethan’s good graces and past whatever protective charm he’s got hidden on him is going to take up the most of it. But if nothing else, Mark’s always liked a challenge.

“I’m still new at it,” Mark answers, and it’s sort of the truth; he hadn’t started using witch magic until he’d gotten his hands on the grimoire.

“Really? Most people start learning when they’re halfway to adulthood,” says Ethan, looking genuinely curious, only for his face to color almost instantly after. “Oh, not that I’m saying you're old or a late bloomer, it’s just-“

Mark tunes him out for a moment, focusing on his stew again. One thing he’s learned about Ethan from the absurdly short amount of time he’s been around him is that the kid will talk forever if you let him. That gives Mark another moment to think while he rambles. He would need to come up with a reason for being at the cottage in the dead of night; there was no way Ethan wasn’t at least a little suspicious about why he had found Mark unconscious outside his gate.

(Then again, this was the same dumb kid who was walking around alone in the middle of the night, so maybe he wasn’t aware enough to be suspicious after all)

He could say he’d been looking for someone to study with; after all, he didn’t have a mentor, not for witch magic at least. He’d had a magus mentor once when he was younger to show him how to control his inherent magic (he was deceased now, by Mark’s own hand or not, the world would never know). Everything he knew about witch magic, however, he’d taught himself.

“You must be pretty skilled,” says Mark. Ethan has finally stopped talking long enough for him to get a word in edgewise. “I’m sure you’ve been training for a long time.”

“Huh? Me? I mean…I guess. Like I said, I just got out of my apprenticeship a while ago…” Ethan says, scrubbing the back of his head in a sheepish gesture.

“I was looking for someone to help me,” says Mark, and, inwardly, it kind of stings at his pride to be playing the part of a weak novice, but he has to remind himself that in terms of witch magic, he technically _was_. “I heard from the townspeople that you were the resident witch; thought I’d come by to see for myself.”

“Help you? With what?”

“I need someone to teach me,” says Mark.

Ethan blinks, his eyes wide at the implication as realization settles in. “ _Oh_. Oh gosh…I…I don’t know. I mean, I’m still so new at being on my own.” He looks frazzled, tugging at the woven bracelet on his wrist, a tic which does not go unnoticed by Mark ( _How curious_ , he thinks; he stows that information away for later). “Oh boy. Um…what about your mentor?”

“Dead.”

“Huh?”

“He died a while back. It’s just me now.”

Ethan pales and frowns, looking even more out of sorts. “Oh man. I’m sorry…” He looks down at the quilt and tugs at a loose and fraying end of string, abandoning his bracelet. “Still, I don’t know if I’m the best fit for this.

“You’ve got incredible talent,” says Mark. “Don’t sell yourself short. You cast that powerful protection spell on the gate after all.”

Ethan grimaces. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I kind of fucked that up.”

“Hardly. It worked, didn’t it? Kept magical creatures out?”

Ethan shrugged, now straying from the string and tugging harder on the bracelet again. “It’s just…I’ve never taught anyone anything. I don’t know if I’ll do it right. And I was next to impossible to teach; really! I can’t focus for shit and I don’t know how well that’ll translate into me trying to teach someone else what I know…”

“If you’re really not sure, you could just direct me to your mentor,” says Mark. “Where are they?” He’s got a feeling he already knows the answer: either dead or off galivanting around doing witchy things in the far-flung reaches of the world (i.e. fucked off to meddle with mystical things, also known as a ‘vacation’).

“She’s gone for the spring,” says Ethan, wringing his hands together in his lap. “She used to live in this cottage. But once she retired from teaching me, she decided to go and see the world again. She left this place to me to practice in. I have no idea when she’ll be back.” He sighed, running his hand through his hair. “Gods, what would she say? What would she _do_?”

Mark watches him deliberate in his own head for a little while. He doesn’t want to play the desperate ‘ _I’ll do anything_ ’ card, but he can’t afford to let this opportunity get away. He’s halfway through convincing himself it’s worth it to reduce himself to begging - gods, even _that_ leaves an acrid taste in his mouth – when Ethan speaks up first.

“Okay.”

Mark raises a quizzical eyebrow. “Okay?”

“I…I’ll teach you. I’ll do my best. That’s what Kathryn would have wanted: for me to pass down the legacy of magic.” A look of determination settles across Ethan’s features as he says this, and he even nods to himself, as if confirming his decision in his own head.

He turns back to Mark, a small and shy small on his face. He looks equal parts relieved and nervous enough to start shaking like a leaf. "So," he says, voice surprisingly stronger than his disposition,“when do you want to start?”

Mark doesn’t miss a beat. When he speaks, his voice is solid and final.

“Immediately.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, it's cloud again! sorry it's been a little minute. work is brutal and i'm also working on a personal project on the side, but i'm trying to get caught up! as always, i'm on tumblr at veedoesthings.tumblr.com


	3. in which mark snoops

Witch magic – the good old-fashioned kind – has quickly become something of a love-hate relationship for Mark.

He’s always loved learning new things about the world, himself, magic. It’s one of the joys of life. He always wants to see how much he can learn about a given topic and he never gets bored with it. There’s always something new and interesting to learn, even when you think you know all there is to know about something; _when that thought crosses your mind, you just have to look at things differently_ , Mark’s old mentor had told him as a teenager. _You simply have to look at it from a different angle._ And Mark had held fast to that line of thinking ever since. It was why even the most mundane things had stayed interesting for so long, how he kept learning and knowing more than most people in the entire realm.

But _fuck_ witch magic. _Hard_.

It should have come easy to him, really. He’d already dabbled a little in it while trying to finish up the cloak of darkness, but he’d quickly learned that none of that held a candle to what Ethan could do and expected him to be able to do too. There was some kind of disconnect between the magic that came from the earth and the inherent magic Mark possessed. With the magic within himself, he needed only to call upon his own strength to use it. No memorization of spells or learning the spoken language of magic. It had simply been something he could strengthen over time with his mind and heart. Witch magic was nothing at all like that. Where he could will the magic to do what he wanted, witch magic was stubborn and did only as witch magic wanted unless you knew exactly how to wrangle it into submission. He’d stumbled through most of the spells in comparison, not quite sure what each ingredient was supposed to do. He could hardly call himself even a novice at witch magic. And that was no clearer than when he watched Ethan work.

It was clear from the beginning that Mark had next to no idea what he was doing. All of the ingredients that he had gathered for the cloak of darkness were hardly ever used in white witch magic. That was another thing: the shades of magic. Just like with mage magic, there were shades of witch magic as well: white and black (gray too, but the topic of it’s existence was highly debated about in many witch circles). White magic and black magic wasn’t that much different from the separate facets of mage magic, but to Mark it was really more an argument of semantics than actual, physical difference. White magic was better suited for healing, protection, divination and those sorts of things. Black magic was the other side of that coin. Black magic could heal and protect and foresee as well, but it was more just a matter of the ethics of the caster’s methods and modus operandi while employing those spells. For example, a white witch could heal using the help of herbs, the offerings of the earth and an incantation that carried on the wind like a song almost. Black witches healed – or tended to attempt to, usually with painful repercussions and no small amount of bargaining with the powers that be – with fire and ash and blood and a slightly sinister-sounding incantation that crackled like thunder and parchment. It really made no difference to Mark; they both were a different means with which the same ends could be met. Ethan, disgustingly and most obviously (because of course he was), was a white witch. When he taught Mark the spells, the air smelled of herbs and plants and sweet smelling smoke and the walls echoed with his voice.

He was teaching Mark the basics of the ingredients of white magic, what each of the main ingredients did, where to find them, how to harvest them. He’d had to start from the basics since Mark had next to no idea about anything at all (he’d managed to hide the severity of that inconvenience by telling Ethan that his mentor hadn’t been a very effective teacher – his _nonexistent_ witch magic mentor, mind – and that had seemed to perk Ethan up a little, the thought that he couldn’t possibly do worse than a mentor who hadn’t even bothered to teach his student the basics of witch magic). Ethan mixed the herbs and plants together in poultices and pastes, potions and powders, or sometimes simply chanted the arcana whilst holding them in his hands. He really did have a nice voice and Mark was remiss to admit to himself that he didn’t mind it. He’d almost say that it reminded him of a voice he’d heard once in his younger years, but that was as far as he would allow his thoughts to go.

 _Homesick?_ his thoughts whispered cruelly. Strangely, his brain echoed his thoughts in his own voice, albeit a dark, deeply twisted version. It wasn’t anything new, but it annoyed him when he heard it.

“Far from it,” he growled.

“What was that?” said Ethan, barely looking up from sorting through the herbs he’d gone out and gathered late that morning on the table. He wasn’t an early riser, that was for sure. Mark, who usually rose with the dawn, had been awake long before Ethan had even begun to stir, sitting by the window and watching the sky turn from a rosy pink to a dusty blue. Spencer, whom Mark had all but forgotten the existence of up until he made himself known, lay on the floor at the foot Ethan’s bed, head on his paws. He seemed, as he had from the moment Mark had shown up at the cottage, not to trust Mark at all, which was more than could be said about Ethan.

“Nothing,” said Mark, turning his attention back to Ethan and shoving his pesky thoughts back into the dark corners of his brain.

“Okay, so,” said Ethan, pressing on with the lesson that Mark had only been half paying attention to up until then, “what’s this one called?”

He pointed at a cluster of greens dotted with little white flowers.

“Starcress,” says Mark. He has no idea why it’s called that; like, maybe the little white flowers were vaguely shaped like five-pointed stars, but that was all Mark had to go on.

“How do you use it?”

“It’s good for poultices. Slows poison. It’s also good as is for small protection spells if you chant the incantation.”

Ethan grins and the sight is blinding. “That’s right! Okay, how about this one?”

He taps the table next to a few sprigs of yellow flowering stalks. They were dizzyingly fragrant, and the near-overbearingly sweet smell almost gave Mark a headache.

“Goldenglow. Good for medicinal potions. You mix it into a tea and it’s good for treating headaches – ironically. And…”

Ethan leans his hands on the table, watching Mark intently as he wracks his memory for the answer. Quietly, he mutters something.

“What?” says Mark.

Ethan says it again, louder this time. Mark vaguely recognizes it as the word used in one of the goldenglow incantations Ethan taught him.

 _Ad somnum_.

“It helps with sleeping and good dreams,” says Mark in answer.

“Yeah! You’re really good at this,” Ethan says. “It took me ages to finally learn which herb did what.”

“You’ve only taught me that word,” says Mark. Ethan hadn’t actually taught him any incantations yet, said it was important to learn the proper uses of the items being used in the spell before the actual arcana. The herbs had their own power yes, but the spell was what pulled the arcana hidden in both herb and word together and held it in place for use. Saying the incantation incorrectly was just as likely to have ill effects as it was not even working in the first place. “ _Ad somnum_. That can’t be the entire spell.”

Ethan shrugged. “It’s not. _Aurum ope, vi vox dulcior mihi somnia somno beatus_.”

A shiver crept down Mark’s spine. Ethan tended to stumble over his words more often than not, but he spoke the spell with a practiced tongue, more sure of his words than Mark had ever heard him. He’d never forgotten who or what Ethan was, but it always threw Mark for a loop when Ethan switched from the friendly, kind of awkward cottage-dweller to dangerous and powerful white witch like it was nothing. It was almost like looking at a different person.

“Took me a while to learn that one,” says Ethan, a small, fond smile playing on his lips. “My mentor, when I was a kid, she would sometimes sing the spell to me to help me sleep. She never cast it, just spoke the words. It helped.” He shrugged again. “After hearing it so many times, I guess it finally stuck.”

Mark would have to hear it again before he learned to say it properly and a few times more after that. He murmured the words to himself, testing the feel of them on his tongue.

“Okay, how about this one-“

Ethan jumped at the sudden pounding on the door (Mark had seen Spencer’s ears as they pricked, so he’d been privy to a disturbance nearby anyway). He went and opened it – without even checking to see who it might be beforehand, Mark noted; that protection spell must be the work of the gods themselves for Ethan to be so careless all the time – revealing a frantic looking man on the doorstep, wringing his hands.

“Would you be the witch of the green?” said the man, desperation clinging to his voice.

“Um, yeah. That’s me,” said Ethan shifting from foot to foot. He seemed almost embarrassed by the title. _Witch of the green?_ That sounded impressive.

“Please, sir,” said the man, “my daughter, Luna…you must help her. She’s come down with sickness. She’s been ill for days and the fever hasn’t let up yet.”

Mark watched concern immediately etch itself on Ethan’s face. He himself remained outwardly impassive, leaning forward on his elbows on the table, curious to see how this would play out.

“I-I’m sorry…” says Ethan, glancing back into the cottage at Mark. He looks intensely nervous. “I don’t…”

The man’s face drops in despair. “Please, I can pay!”

Ethan winces. Mark rolls his eyes. Blessed stars, _save him_.

“Ethan,” he calls, waving him over when he startles and realizes his name’s been called. Ethan all but sprints over to him.

“What’s wrong?” asks Mark, keeping his voice down so that the man at the door doesn’t overhear.

“I…it’s just…I’ve never done a healing spell on my own. I-I’ve only ever done it with Kathryn to oversee it! I don’t know if I’ll screw it up without her. I mean, I managed to mess up the protection spell on the gate; if I mess up a healing spell, then I could…I could…”

Ethan’s been snapping at the bracelet on his wrist the entire time. Mark sighs softly, calling upon the patience he’s gained over the years and says, “Look, Ethan. First of all, you’re – actually, no, first, take a deep breath.”

He raises an eyebrow and watches expectantly as Ethan breathes in and visibly attempts to calm himself down, then presses on.

“Okay. First of all, you’re a witch, aren’t you?”

Ethan’s brow furrows in confusion. “Y-yes?”

“You’re a white witch, right? Your magic is pure,” says Mark.

“I know, but if I get it wrong-“

“You don’t use your magic selfishly or to hurt others, so what do you use it for?”

Ethan sighs hard, like Mark just isn’t understanding, and, really, he isn’t; what is so hard about this? “To help people, but-“

“So?” interrupts Mark. He gestures at the man in the door. “Help people.”

“Mark-“

“ _Second of all_ ,” Mark talks right over him, “that protection spell was perfectly fine. You’ve got to get over that. It did its job.”

“It hurt you.”

“Nobody died.”

Ethan grimaces at that. Mark refrains from rolling his eyes.

Only barely though.

“Look, I can’t force you to go and help this guy. But I think you’ll regret it if you don’t,” he says.

Ethan frowns, bothering with his bracelet again. He seems to be reconsidering at least.

“You've got to get over this hang-up. You’re a good kid. I don’t think you’d be able to live with yourself if someone was suffering and you didn’t help them when you knew you could. And anyway, wouldn’t your mentor want you to help? That’s why she taught you, isn’t it?”

Ethan makes a face like he’s in pain. Mark can see him deliberating with himself in his head and almost gives up on trying to convince him. He's never been much for pep-talks anyway. They wasted too much time and could easily be done without in Mark's experience. You either _did_ , or you _didn't_. Mark usually _did_. Then Ethan’s shoulders slump and he heaves a sigh. He nods to himself.

“You’re right,” he says. He nods again. “Okay. Okay. I’ll do it.”

Mark gives him a smile that he hopes is reassuring. “You’ll be fine.”

Ethan nods a third time, looking a little more confident in himself. “Right.”

He turns back to the man in the door, who has been standing there the entire time, waiting and watching with worried but hopeful eyes. “I’ll do it. Walk me through her symptoms and we’ll go from there.”

The man steps inside, listing off his daughter’s ailments as Ethan flits around the cottage, pulling down jars and picking off herbs hanging from the ceiling rafters and stuffing them into the leather satchel Mark hands him as he goes. He mumbles the ingredients under his breath as the man speaks.

“Pipe rye for fatigue…arnica root for detox…”

He stuffed the last few ingredients into his bag and grabbed his cloak from the hook by the door.

“Mark, are you coming with?”

Mark looks up at the sound of his name, and then shakes his head.

“I’ll stay here and…” he gestures at the table, tapping next to the starcress, “familiarize myself with the herbs.”

Ethan offers him a small grin. “Alright.”

He looks like he might say more, but Mark doesn’t give him a chance to talk himself out of it. “You’ll be fine,” he says, shooing him out the door.

Ethan’s smile gets a little stronger. “Right,” he says. “I won’t be long then.”

Then he’s gone with the man, the door swinging shut behind him, and the cottage is silent.

* * *

The amicable grin on Mark’s face slips almost as soon the door is shut and he breathes out a harsh sigh, as if putting on a friendly face for so long had been exhausting. Mark hadn’t smiled that much in years and it had all been a façade, a means to an end, but it was worth it. In the few days he’d been in the cottage with Ethan, he’d had maybe five minutes of time alone when he could relax, and the rest of it had been spent playing at being as friendly and harmless as he could possibly manage. Sure, he slipped sometimes, like when Ethan was shotgunning questions at him a mile a minute and he snapped at him to give it a rest, but he’d been more accommodating for the young witch than he’d ever been for almost anyone (he certainly could have been much _worse_ to Ethan, considering the amount of blood he had on his hands).

Spencer seems to be acutely aware of the shift in Mark’s behavior and growls in what Mark can only assume is a warning. Mark growls back – which _isn’t_ weird; he growls at Chica all the time when she decides to give him attitude – and flicks at the gondol root ( _good for lifting curses and easing upset stomachs_ , Mark thinks offhandedly) by his wrist.

Gods, he had been so sure that wasn’t going to work. He’d never been in the business of encouraging people, least of all people he was looking to tear apart with his bare hands at some point in the very near future, but he had managed it somehow. Now he’s got the cottage to himself like he wanted (sans Spencer, but whatever, he’ll make do for now; it wasn’t like he could get the dog to leave what with how little it trusted him). He gets up from the table and takes a look around the room for a feasible place to start. He’d been waiting to search the cottage while Ethan was away since he’d started apprenticing (ugh, _that_ grates on Mark’s pride something fierce) under him, and there are a few places he really wants to investigate. Preferably, he’s hoping to find out anything he can about Ethan and what this protection spell might be. Maybe he wrote the spell down somewhere? Plenty of witches and mages wrote their spells down – that’s what grimoires were after all, just a collection of spells and, on plenty of occasions, inane magical bullshit. Maybe Ethan has one around the cottage somewhere. There’s not much to the cottage itself really: there’s the main room where the table (which serves as both a workspace and a dining table, which clashes with Mark’s meticulous and cautious nature; you never ate where you crafted your spells, what the actual _fuck?),_ the fireplace and Ethan’s bed are located. Mark sleeps on a bedroll on the floor, which isn’t much different from the pile of furs he sleeps on back in his cave. There’s a little storage room in the back, what looks like a cellar out behind the cottage and a tiny restroom. The entire space should be cramped – _is_ cramped – but is incredibly cozy and homey and makes Mark want to punch something.

Mark supposes he should probably start with the pile of papers and books shoved in one of the only bookcases in the cottage. He gets up and wanders over, already dreading the process of having to sift through the leaning tower. It looks like books have been haphazardly crammed onto the shelves with stray sheets of parchment and paper slipped in wherever they too could fit. How in the seven hells was Mark supposed to find a single spell in all this mess? He wonders if this is Ethan's mentor's handiwork or his, decides it's probably Ethan's and makes a mental note to grill him on it later. Witch or mage, it was never a good idea to have such a cluttered workspace, which did sound like a weird philosophy for a mage who lived in a cave of all places to have. But seriously, how was he supposed to find anything in this chaos? Mark frowns. 

Ethan did say the spell was recently created; if it was recent, then it was more likely to be cleaner than the other books and papers that seemed to be covered in dust and yellowed with age. Mark hoped the spell was written on a sheet of paper and not a book; there was hardly any time to be sifting through books for a single spell. Who knew when Ethan would be back? And then, of course, there was Spencer to contend with. The dog was already wary of his being there, and if he knew anything about magically-enhanced animal companions, it was that they could be as difficult as their human counterparts. Mark was honestly surprised Ethan hadn't kicked him out just because his dog didn't seem to like him. With a resigned sigh, Mark sets to work thumbing through the papers on the top shelf first. It made enough sense to start there - if the spell was written on a sheet of paper and left behind, it would have probably been left where it was easiest to toss it. Therein lies the second problem. 

"Gods sake," Mark mutters, rolling his eyes skyward. Some of these papers look like they were handwritten by chickens. Most of the scrawl is quick and viney, as if whoever had written it was in a hurry. Mark supposed that made sense too - if you had an idea that you desperately needed to get down on paper so that you wouldn't forget it, the last thing you were worried about was the beauty of your penmanship. But none of that mattered if, when the time came to come back and re-read what you wrote, you could barely make out your own shitty handwriting. Mark squints at a particularly brutal-looking piece of chicken scratch for a few long minutes. He gives up after being unable to decide if whoever had been writing was trying to spell ‘black pine’ or ‘bear pee’ and tries a different sheet of parchment. This one is slightly better - he can almost read what’s being written and recognizes it as a recipe for an anxiety-reduction spell. There are some letters here and there, the envelopes they’d been sent in accompanying them with their broken wax seals, some scraps of notes, pieces of music.

The music is curious; Mark knows that Ethan sings sometimes. He’d heard him do as much when he’d been following him days ago. Mark wonders if some of the spells have to be sung; maybe the protection spell was one of those that needed to have a melody. After all, Ethan had told him once before that some spells needed to have a certain cadence when spoken in order to work. It doesn’t help much to try and decipher the lyrics written with the music, since Mark doesn’t know enough of the magic language to even stumble his way through it. he’ll try to remember to ask Ethan about that later. There’s a recipe for pie – two of them – and a recipe for some type of dog treat. There are spells for calming and mental clarity, protection wards against bad dreams, wild animals and even pickpockets, directions on how to care for certain herbs in their jars and windowboxes, scraps of songs and poems, but nothing that Mark could pick out as the protection spell he needed.

He opens one of the newer looking books crammed onto the shelf and a scrap of paper falls out, fluttering in a little dance to the floor. Mark scoops it up and looks it over. It’s a sleeping spell, different from the one Ethan taught him for good dreams. this one uses ingredients Ethan hasn’t taught him about yet, like wicker root and enchanter’s nightshade. It might come in handy, should Mark ever get around to needing it, might help him snoop about some more when he was unable to get Ethan out of the cottage. Maybe it would even work on Spencer.

Mark pockets the recipe and flips through the book. It’s a witch’s grimoire indeed, but more of the same harmless spells that he’d already come across. He’s already growing bored of the same medicinal spells and spells for good luck and good fortune, but that could probably be because he’s got no use for the white magic that Ethan could offer him, not these spells at least. He had no need for luck anyway; he’d never gotten what he wanted through luck at any point in his life. Whatever he wanted, all that he had, he’d received because of himself and his own power.

With a growl of frustration, Mark shoves the book back onto the shelf. No sense in going through the others, they were all too caked with dust to be of any use to his search. On the floor by the bed, Spencer lifts his head and smiles his doggy smile, almost as if laughing at Mark’s inability to find anything in his master’s mess. Mark glares at him with enough venom that he hopes it’s tangible, but Spencer doesn’t seem to mind. That trick had never really worked on Chica back at home either. He wonders how she's doing without him, hopes she hasn't gotten into his study again. 

_Homesick?_ rings that same voice from earlier in Mark's head. He was getting tired of hearing that awful voice, the twist of his own cadence into something crueler and fouler. It never brought anything but weakness and a longing for time long passed and memories that were better off being forgotten.

"Far from it," Mark murmured into the quiet air. He brushed a hand over his chest, lingering over a scar that had been put there and forgotten about until moments like these. "Far from it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry it took me so long to get this out! work has been crazy busy, but now i've finally got some time to write and post! i hope you enjoy!
> 
> by the aid of a golden glow, by the power of my voice, grant me blessed sleep and sweeter dreams// aurum ope, vi vox dulcior mihi somnia somno beatus

**Author's Note:**

> as always, i've been cloud (or vee) and thanks for reading!  
> tumblr: veedoesthings.tumblr.com


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